but that's why we should be encouraging unwed teen-mothers to get abortions.

self-rightous asshole much?

Practical at the expense of any shred of sentimentality, perhaps. There's a difference (in intent, if not necessarily in reception) between trying to cause offense (asshole) and not pulling any punches in expressing an unpopular or unpalatable solution (insensitive).

but that's why we should be encouraging unwed teen-mothers to get abortions.

self-rightous asshole much?

Practical at the expense of any shred of sentimentality, perhaps. There's a difference (in intent, if not necessarily in reception) between trying to cause offense (asshole) and not pulling any punches in expressing an unpopular or unpalatable solution (insensitive).

However, we don't have that many PMs. Therefore, they handle the major projects. Minor projects are left to fend for themselves.

Many of my projects fall into this category -- primarily because they aren't cross-team in any major way. This has lead me to do Project Management since I still have to report the status of these projects. This leads me to be a tech lead and a project manager and a major developer all at the same time.

So, I now ask: what is actually hard about project management? It just seems to be an exercise in OCD behavior and issue tracking more than anything else -- nothing I want to do and something I'm thankful that someone else will do, but, at the same time, nothing that seems to need an inordinate amount of expertise.

This makes me ask: what am I missing? What aspects of project management are hard and difficult to understand? Or is it an issue of "this is what you do, I hope you enjoy it."?

The things that are hard about project management are precisely the differences between major and minor projects. They're played out over a longer time-span, so uncertainty in how long component tasks will take and when they will be performed potentially introduces a lot of risk to manage. They potentially involve multiple groups who then need to be coordinated so as not to waste anyone's time. If there's uncertainty about whether particular parts of a project are feasible, or which options are most tenable, expertise in how to balance and schedule effort among the possibilities or partial explorations thereof can be quite valuable. I'm sure some experienced PMs here can probably offer up even more.

This leads me to be a tech lead and a project manager and a major developer all at the same time.

Same, except half my projects already have PMs. They're just not good at their job

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This makes me ask: what am I missing? What aspects of project management are hard and difficult to understand? Or is it an issue of "this is what you do, I hope you enjoy it."?

Scheduling is important, the ability to accurately get estimates out of people that are a close approximation to the actual time required, while still setting customer expectations properly. Being on top of everything is somewhat easy when you have small projects, but when you have a large, multi-org project (or many of them!) it's a significant effort and you need to spend as little time doing it but with rapid results. Resolution is probably the largest part - when you hit a roadblock and two or more people on the project are giving differing solutions, attempting to unfold the issue and decide on the best resolution for the entire project - because the PM knows the entire project schedule, whereas the people involved in a dispute may only be aware of their components.

Last but not least, the ability to herd cats is not to be underestimated. I sure as shit don't have the patience for it.

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Agreed, we should move on to how useless a University education has been! That has not come up for almost a month!

However, we don't have that many PMs. Therefore, they handle the major projects. Minor projects are left to fend for themselves.

Many of my projects fall into this category -- primarily because they aren't cross-team in any major way. This has lead me to do Project Management since I still have to report the status of these projects. This leads me to be a tech lead and a project manager and a major developer all at the same time.

So, I now ask: what is actually hard about project management? It just seems to be an exercise in OCD behavior and issue tracking more than anything else -- nothing I want to do and something I'm thankful that someone else will do, but, at the same time, nothing that seems to need an inordinate amount of expertise.

This makes me ask: what am I missing? What aspects of project management are hard and difficult to understand? Or is it an issue of "this is what you do, I hope you enjoy it."?

One thing I've had to start doing is realize when I only have 30 minutes between two meetings on two different projects, that I should make some progress on development in the meantime. This means that I spend 10 minutes or more figuring out what I should be doing, followed by 10 minutes of determining how to get the development environment to where I need, followed by coding for 5 minutes, then going to the meeting.

The question of whether it's hard or not is entirely separate. The fact of the matter is so valuable role, because it lets other people who actually do stuff, to do it. Around here project manager interviews test for things like the ability to have difficult conversations, negotiating with a difficult business owner, for example if you need to negotiate scope or schedule. The ability to juggle multiple priorities, get everyone together on the same page, etc. In other words, soft skills. Soft skills are often harder to teach than hard skills.

I'm not a PM, and I still have a lot of context switching I need to do in a day, among multiple projects of varying sizes and complexities. My second point was simply about how I've started dealing with it to some degree. One approach is, "I will only work on one project at a time." That ship has sailed for me. Another answer is, "I will carefully divide up my week/days to deal with projects. That is also hard with many different players and timezones.

So, I live with the fact that my schedule can be meeting about project A, meeting about project B, team status update involving projects C-E, 30 minute non-scheduled, meeting about project F, answering incoming questions about A,B,C, etc. Now, in that 30 minutes, I used to say, "What's the point in trying to do anything since I won't get very far." Now, I go ahead and try to get somewhere in that time. That was solely the point of that post.

Also: I am not convinced that this is the most effective or productive way to do anything -- it just happens to be that most people like to see some steady and slow progress on projects instead of a "I'll do your project 6 months from now"-kind of thing. This is most likely my failure in communicating and scheduling more than anything else.

I grew up with people like this. Someone always there to bail you out, someone always there to fix things. You end up with these types of conversations.

[...]

You: Well, you can make all the excuses you want, but you'll never be happy if you do...

I always want to punch those people in the face.

I want to punch my monitor after reading that.

The thing is, they don't get it. They really don't. I don't recall the name of the famous essay on boots (someone here may know and link to it), but the argument goes that a poor person can only afford $60 boots, which wear out in a year, and they are uncomfortable, leak, and look like crap. His friend has $200 boots, and says they last 5 years without leaking, and they look very nice. His friend should invest in better boots because he saves money in the long term. But the poor friend cannot swing $200 in one go. Thus the poor spend more on shit that breaks, like crappy cars, for instance. And the people who have never had to struggle or scrimp for every last dime somehow assumes the poor person is at fault for doing dumb shit, like buying cheap boots, having a car that breaks down all the time, or has a terrible diet. I know, I have been on both sides.

So, I now ask: what is actually hard about project management? It just seems to be an exercise in OCD behavior and issue tracking more than anything else

If you read the stuff from the PMI on what a PM is supposed to do, it is a lot more than that. Of course, I have never worked any place where the PM actually had budget authority, did reviews of team members for their annual reviews, navigated the political waters to get buy-in from the multiple stakeholders, etc.

IME, they are glorified list makers/maintainers who make no decisions and strive to make everyone equally unhappy.

I'm not a PM, and I still have a lot of context switching I need to do in a day, among multiple projects of varying sizes and complexities. My second point was simply about how I've started dealing with it to some degree. One approach is, "I will only work on one project at a time." That ship has sailed for me. Another answer is, "I will carefully divide up my week/days to deal with projects. That is also hard with many different players and timezones.

Yes, I suspect this problem is shared between PMs and solution architects (or whatever your equivalent of technical lead is).

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So, I live with the fact that my schedule can be meeting about project A, meeting about project B, team status update involving projects C-E, 30 minute non-scheduled, meeting about project F, answering incoming questions about A,B,C, etc. Now, in that 30 minutes, I used to say, "What's the point in trying to do anything since I won't get very far." Now, I go ahead and try to get somewhere in that time. That was solely the point of that post.

Yes, I understood. I still fall into that trap, FWIW. The problem is worse, the further removed you get from the guts of whatever you're working on, too.

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Also: I am not convinced that this is the most effective or productive way to do anything -- it just happens to be that most people like to see some steady and slow progress on projects instead of a "I'll do your project 6 months from now"-kind of thing. This is most likely my failure in communicating and scheduling more than anything else.

I couldn't agree more. I've had this discussion with my boss probably 5-7 times over the year and a half that I've been here. After all, a lot of this coordination/communication/etc. is little more than value-free thrashing, as absolutely nothing gets built.

--

Anyway, have you tried to manage your schedule instead of letting it manage you? I know you get up early quite a lot, but have you considered blocking out time on your calendar where people can't meet with you so you can do development? (Don't do it now, but maybe do it here and there starting three weeks from now.)

There's always going to be a tension between development and operations, and it sucks when you have to wear both hats. When I start getting bogged down in operations stuff, I start blocking off hours of time where I won't be interrupted.

This makes me ask: what am I missing? What aspects of project management are hard and difficult to understand? Or is it an issue of "this is what you do, I hope you enjoy it."?

Well, sometimes you have to go to these certification classes. And, other times, you have to schedule conference calls around the schedules of multiple people. Also, you get blamed for everyone else's failures.

One thing I've had to start doing is realize when I only have 30 minutes between two meetings on two different projects, that I should make some progress on development in the meantime. This means that I spend 10 minutes or more figuring out what I should be doing, followed by 10 minutes of determining how to get the development environment to where I need, followed by coding for 5 minutes, then going to the meeting.

But it's 5 more minutes of coding than I would have done otherwise.

It's quite mentally exhausting by the end of the day.

I've linked it twice before in this thread alone, but the article Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule was a big help in organizing my thoughts in a similar situation in the past. Not that that solves the problem, but it's something.

In grad school I took several classes on Systems Engineering, including a big one on engineering project management. (The classes were mostly helpful in showing me an aspect of engineering that I had no interest in doing, but that's beside the point. ) As I see it the most technical aspect is being conversant enough in all the disciplines involved to be able to sanity-check and/or negotiate on the budgets and schedules in question, and also to see if there are any important areas (disciplines/departments) not being accounted for in the project planning. I think a good project manager can make a big difference, but mostly in the less-tangible ways that make them hard to identify and assess value to. Other than that, it's a lot of spreadsheet work with budgets and schedules, making sure everything stays coordinated and updated accurately, and hassling people to get their info in and their parts done.

but that's why we should be encouraging unwed teen-mothers to get abortions.

self-rightous asshole much?

Practical at the expense of any shred of sentimentality, perhaps. There's a difference (in intent, if not necessarily in reception) between trying to cause offense (asshole) and not pulling any punches in expressing an unpopular or unpalatable solution (insensitive).

50% jump in pay would be the difference between having to check my bank account before going shopping for food or going whenever the whim hit and not thinking twice.

It would be the difference between wondering how many more months the used tires I bought for $25 each are going to last, versus simply heading to Costco or Tires.com.

It would be the difference between buying clothes for my kids only at Marshalls clearance and skipping on buying any clothes and hoping I get it for Christmas from relatives, versus scooting over to whatever clothing store fit my whim and buying what I needed/wanted. It's the difference between my wife and I almost breaking into tears at all the beautiful hand-me-downs we got for our daughter from a friend of ours, versus being able to buy clothes not on sale from whatever normal clothing store fit the need.

It would be the difference between shopping for whichever fast food restaurant has the $1 drink deal versus dropping by Starbucks every day for an overpriced milkshake.

Whoa, hey, sorry. I wasn't trying to say that I can't sympathize with you; seven years ago, I was working in retail as my primary source of support, and my budget for food was a hundred bucks a month. I remember getting a raise above 8 bucks an hour and thinking "Sweet, now I can afford to go out to eat to Taco Bell a couple times a month!" I understand where you're coming from, and I didn't mean to suggest that what you're thinking about doing is wrong; it's absolutely right. I was just pointing out that I could see how your manager could be right, too -- it's very possible for both your opinions here to be right, simultaneously. If you've been financially comfortable for a while it's easy to forget what having to scrimp and save feels like, and when that happens, it can be very difficult to relate.

I think you're misunderstanding. It's not that what he's saying about himself is wrong. It's wrong in what he's saying that's how I should think about my current income, when it's his much greater income that allows him to have that luxury of saying such.

I could almost see him polishing his Monopoly man monocle while he was saying that (a little more money doesn't mean much) to me.

It's sad that we as an Ars community leave it to the Lounge to attempt to help correct people in these bad decisions, when it should very much be Boardroom-level advice on explaining the mistakes with this sort of non-planning.

We could always talk about Ageism in the workplace. Especially relevant with an aging workforce. Or toxic work environments filled with molds, bacteria, and viruses, not to mention all the chemicals present.

But the underlying causes of the condition are even easier -- having a child out of wedlock,

How does having a child with someone that you are not married to cause poor financial management?

It also seems blatantly ridiculous to contribute being poor solely/primarily to someone's personal decisions.

Do you believe that a mother with a child at age 17 is going to have no problems getting an education or starting a career?

Do you believe that a couple at age 17 or 18, with a kid or two, are going to be able to save and make various choices that optimize a career trajectory?

Having a child at a young age or unmarried is probably the result of a deeper problem with "failure to plan ahead", but that's why we should be encouraging unwed teen-mothers to get abortions.

I'm confused why do you seem to responding to points I havent made. I never said anything about age, I asserted that having a child out of marriage is not a cause of financial mismanagement.

Of course having a child in your teens will affect your ability to work. You seem to completely dismiss the validity of people who are in relationships with children but are not married. What a narrow view of the world.

Mr. BossMan, you're working late and I'm here working late. Or, you were working late. It would have been nice if you'd said "Good night," to me. You said it to that guy in the office next to you -- who has nothing to do with our group -- but not to me, one of your direct reports. You did, afterall, walk right by my cube on your way out.

In and of itself, it's minor. But it's just one more reason to feel like a second-class citizen.

I'm confused why do you seem to responding to points I havent made. I never said anything about age, I asserted that having a child out of marriage is not a cause of financial mismanagement.

Of course having a child in your teens will affect your ability to work. You seem to completely dismiss the validity of people who are in relationships with children but are not married. What a narrow view of the world.

In Franklin County, where the overall child-poverty rate rose to nearly 26 percent last year, households headed by single women with children were more than five times as likely to be poor. About 8 percent of married couples with children lived in poverty; nearly 44 percent of single mothers did.

Options 1 stops a mistake from being made. Option 2 and 3 mitigates the mistake. Option 4 is the one that means a likely life of poverty for the mother and the child. Not recognizing this as a society is irresponsible. Pretending that the problem will simply fix itself is irresponsible.

I am in training all this week. VMware. I am very happy for this opportunity. After my last job, where I was told "training has little value" by that dumb CTO, this feels so good... like my career is on track.

I am in training all this week. VMware. I am very happy for this opportunity. After my last job, where I was told "training has little value" by that dumb CTO, this feels so good... like my career is on track.

Options 1 stops a mistake from being made. Option 2 and 3 mitigates the mistake. Option 4 is the one that means a likely life of poverty for the mother and the child. Not recognizing this as a society is irresponsible. Pretending that the problem will simply fix itself is irresponsible.

I am in training all this week. VMware. I am very happy for this opportunity. After my last job, where I was told "training has little value" by that dumb CTO, this feels so good... like my career is on track.

Congrats! I know it helped put my career back on track. Be sure to get that certification test done soon after the class while it's still fresh.

Here's an example of what I think of as a project management question: when is the specification done? At some point it has to be accepted, but very few places can afford to go as specific as an aerospace one would go.

I'm confused why do you seem to responding to points I havent made. I never said anything about age, I asserted that having a child out of marriage is not a cause of financial mismanagement.

Of course having a child in your teens will affect your ability to work. You seem to completely dismiss the validity of people who are in relationships with children but are not married. What a narrow view of the world.

In Franklin County, where the overall child-poverty rate rose to nearly 26 percent last year, households headed by single women with children were more than five times as likely to be poor. About 8 percent of married couples with children lived in poverty; nearly 44 percent of single mothers did.

Options 1 stops a mistake from being made. Option 2 and 3 mitigates the mistake. Option 4 is the one that means a likely life of poverty for the mother and the child. Not recognizing this as a society is irresponsible. Pretending that the problem will simply fix itself is irresponsible.

But, sure, go ahead and believe I am just being condescending.

Actually, no, I was making a joke. Marie Antoinette likely NEVER said anything of the kind. The "winners" write history. So, since the revolutionaries won, it's inevitable that their propaganda material taints the historical record.

You might have a different monocle for every day of the week, but it doesn't mean I think you're wrong on this or other stuff.

Sex education and pregnancy prevention via that method is FAR more palatable than any of the remnant alternatives.

WRT financial outcomes and teen pregnancy, the studies are pretty clear. It's pretty much guaranteed to stunt your future income potential compared to the similar person having gone to college, etc instead.

Although, all that was before the housing bubble broke and we hit the depression/recession.

The old saw about getting into IT to get a job, doesn't hold true anymore, unless that job is as a developer or in security. The former more than the latter at this point, but I'm thinking the latter has more long term potential, before it too gets eclipsed by the next thing.

We could always talk about Ageism in the workplace. Especially relevant with an aging workforce

Did aging only kick in recently? I was unaware!

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It sucks much, much worse when you don't wear both hats. I make my bones speaking developer to developers and operations to admins.

I think there's a huge difference between an organization that has someone (or a group if they're large enough) to liaise between developers and operations and an organization that implements devops. I'd take the former over the latter any day.